Bighorn Mountains

Our next stop was in the southern Bighorn National Forest along U.S. highway 16 west of Buffalo Wyoming. In Buffalo we were warned it was good to have reservations, so we pulled into the first promising camp ground and the first open site. It was a pull through, - EASY - It is always good if you don't have to back up the rig - and put down roots for a week. Our site was unfortunately close to the road, which turned out to be fairly “busy” for a Forest Service camp, and this not as private as we would have liked. BUT it was right beside Middle Clear Creek, which flowed merrily down hill with a good volume of very cold water. The out house was only one camp site away and the pitcher pump well provided delicious cold mountain water.

From here we did a lot of exploring over the course of the week both on foot and with the help of "White One". After taking a closer look at our Bighorn National Forest map we discovered why this road that supplied 9 campsites was so busy. The road went much farther up the valley into and provided access to a large number of Forest Service lease cabins. Many years ago the Forest Service used to lease land to people for a very nominal fee and allow them to build permanent private cabins. These leases continue to be handed down in families for generations. In some areas the leases can be sold and in others they can not depending on the Forest Management District policy. Frankly it generated a good deal of the "green eyed dragon" of envy in me. Husband on the other had found it unjust that a few people could have private homes and private use of public land that actually belongs to all of us. The cabins were very nice, some log cabins and others what looked to me like year round homes that of course would not be accessible except by snow shoe or snow mobile in the winter. We walked to the end of the road where it crossed the creek on a foot bridge to the last cabin up the valley. Then we continued walking up hill following the footpath along the creek and then away from the creek high into the mountains near the wilderness boundary.

Here the pines were tall slender gray barked Lodge Pole instead of the massive orange barked Ponderosa. We saw occasional Elk droppings and were constantly on the lookout for them but never had the luck to see them. We saw lots of tracks which we thought might be Elk but there were what looked like cow pies everywhere. "NAH can't be, maybe the Elk are umm loose this time of year." We finally climbed through a saddle and looked down the slope to a stock tank sitting beside a road. DOH!! as the kids say. We were on open range - of course they were cow pies and the tracks were cattle tracks. Sadly in our 31 days on this trip thought we saw lots of piles of Elk poop we never saw one elk.

On this same walk we came out of the forest into an area where there clearly had been fire a number of years before. Sitting on a branch in a dead snag, near a tall rock out crop was a large hawk. To our utter amazement when we looked more closely with our binoculars there on top the the rock out crop was a marmot sunning himself.



Enough for one day - or rather evening - I will continue this story another day. In the meantime you can see more pictures here.